[John Pale]

Where are you seeing stretching?

If you are seeing this in Quicktime Player, that is normal, as QT player does not know about D1 pixels.

[John Pale]

[walter biscardi] “Some folks say Compressor does a good job with this, I wasn’t impressed”

I used to be in this camp, until recently. I had a clip I needed to convert that had graphics in it. No matter what I did, the Nattress clip was too soft. The one I did in Compressor 3, with the Frame controls set to “Better” was razor sharp…identical to the original and the motion was perfect. Oddly enough, the test I did with “Best” was not as good. I guess the algorithm it uses for Best is not appropriate for all types of footage.

Of course the render time was horrifically long (only a G5 Dual 2ghz) but for a 3 minute piece it was worth the wait.

If its a short piece, I would definitely give Compressor a try…but if its lengthy, it might not be practical.

[John Pale]

Apology to Gary…my previous post sounded a bit snippy upon a re-read. Not meant that way at all.

My initial point was that I have actually delivered 720p shows on HDCAM-SR for MyNetworkTV…..so its not completely bizarre to do so….and their specs do offer the option of D5 or HDCAM-SR for delivery. I do have a copy of the specs, and the version i am looking at, which was provided about a month ago does not express a preference…however I do know from speaking with them in the past, that they do in fact prefer D5 if possible.

From their delivery spec sheet….

Video
Video tape delivery shall be on HD-D5 (Panasonic 3700B model or equivalent) or HDCamSR
in 1280×720 progressive (720p) at 59.94Hz (SMPTE 296M-2000).

A minimum of 60 seconds of SMPTE reference color bars (SMPTE RP 219-2002 for
1280×720) and test audio tone shall be recorded on the head of the tape. The test signals
must accurately reflect the program material recorded.
Audio

There is no other mention of a preference anywhere in the docs that were sent to me.

[John Pale]

[Graham Jones] “We are frantic, and must find a solution fast. At this point the only workaround I can think of is to continue to work in DVCProHD with a mask to show the 4:3 safe areas, and do my pan & scan on the 16×9 sequence, then use the KonaLH’s downconverter. It’s workable but not ideal.
“

The best thing you can do would be to get a monitor that can display the 4:3 safe area on a 16:9 frame. A post house that I do a lot of work for has some nice TV Logic monitors that do this, and it makes framing for 4:3 easy (they are primarily an Avid shop, but the principle is the same). Just do all your work in 16:9 and adjust accordingly, then run through your Kona downconvert.

[John Pale]

[gary adcock] “if you check their specs- they mainly request D5 and only want SR if that D5 content not available.”

For the record, I have the specs right in front of me and it doesn’t say that anywhere on them….however, anecdotally I know that they do, in fact prefer D5, so you are not incorrect.

[John Pale]

Does it do this with all fonts or just this one?
Does it do this with other colors than red?

Red is the worst possible choice for text…its notorious for bleeding.

Is this SD or HD? What aspect? Is it a 4:3 title being used in a 16:9 sequence?

Have you tried the “Recreate title media” command? Make sure you have selected 1:1 for your resolution.

[John Pale]

Not sure, but its easy enough to do a test. Why not give it a go and report back

[John Pale]

[gary adcock] “Camera and Decks are engineered to convert that compressed content at the highest quality when it is output back out over Baseband (HDSDI)- the tools are designed to give you the best picture at the highest quality.

Firewire transfer bypass all of this part of the design and force you to rely on someone that was more interested in the post part than the picture part to then decode your image- you get speed but not necessarily the same quality.

“

Okay, understood. Didn’t consider that aspect. As usual, you are on the money.

[John Pale]

You can’t do it directly in an MPEG-2 conversion. You need to convert it to PAL first.

Make an uncompressed or Pro Res Quicktime first, as Rafael said, using the appropriate preset in the Advanced Format Conversion folder. Make sure you turn on the Frame Controls and select Better or Best in the resizing and retiming sections. This will make sure you get the cleanest conversion. If you don’t do this step you will get a quick and dirty conversion which may not look great. Turning on the Frame Controls will greatly increase the encoding time…be prepared for a very long render.

Another option is purchasing the Standards Converter plug in from Graeme Nattress (www.nattress.com). The quality is good, though not as pristine as Compressor using optical flow (higher quality settings in Frame Controls). It is much much faster and works with in FCP.

Before you do any of this, find out if you really need a true PAL DVD. Most PAL DVD Players and TV’s in Europe can handle an NTSC DVD just fine. The same is not true of NTSC DVD players and TV’s in the USA. They rarely can play PAL DVD’s.

[John Pale]

You should not try to make Avid and FCP work together. They really are very different animals when it comes to media (FCP being Quicktime based, Avid being MXF/OMF) and project file format.

If most of the editors you want to work with use Avid, then use Avid…if most use FCP, then use FCP. If its kind of a mix, you can actually have both on your system (assuming cost is not an object). For basic editing, you should be able to get the hang of working with both pretty easily.